From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
racial achievement gap in the United States refers to disparities in educational achievement between differing ethnic/racial groups.
It manifests itself in a variety of ways: African-American and Hispanic
students are more likely to earn lower grades, score lower on
standardized tests,
drop out of high school, and they are less likely to enter and complete college than whites, while whites score lower than Asian Americans.
There is disagreement among scholars regarding the causes of the
racial achievement gap. Some focus on the home life of individual
students, and others focus more on unequal access to resources between
certain ethnic groups. Additionally, political histories, such as anti-literacy laws,
and current policies, such as those related to school funding, have
resulted in an education debt between districts, schools, and students.
The achievement gap affects economic disparities, political participation, and political representation. Solutions have ranged from national policies such as No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, to private industry closing this gap, and even local efforts.
Overview
Over the past 45 years, students in the United States have made
notable gains in academic achievement. However, racial achievement gaps
remain because not all groups of students are advancing at the same
rates. Evidence of the racial achievement gaps have been manifested
through standardized test scores, high school dropout rates, high school
completion rates, college acceptance and retention rates, as well as
through longitudinal trends. While efforts to close racial achievement
gaps have increased over the years with varying success, studies have
shown that disparities still exist between achievement levels of
differing ethnic groups.
Early schooling years
Racial achievement gaps have been found to exist before students enter kindergarten for their first year of schooling, as a "school readiness" gap.
One study claims that about half the test score gap between black and
white high school students is already evident when children start
school.
Children of Latino, Native, and African American heritage arrive to
kindergarten and first grade with lower levels of oral language,
reading, and mathematics skill than Caucasian and Asian American
children.
While results differ depending on the instrument, estimates of the
black-white gap range from slightly less than half a standard deviation
to slightly more than 1 standard deviation.
Reardon and Galindo (2009), using data from the ECLS-K, found that
average Hispanic and black students begin kindergarten with math scores
three quarters of a standard deviation lower than those of white
students and with reading scores a half standard deviation lower than
those of white students. Six years later, Hispanic-white gaps narrow by
roughly a third, whereas black-white gaps widen by about a third. More
specifically, the Hispanic-white gap is a half standard deviation in
math, and three-eighths in reading at the end of fifth grade. The trends
in the Hispanic-white gaps are especially interesting because of the
rapid narrowing that occurs between kindergarten and first grade.
Specifically, the estimated math gap declines from 0.77 to 0.56 standard
deviations, and the estimated reading gap from 0.52 to 0.29 in the
roughly 18 months between the fall of kindergarten and the spring of
first grade. In the four years from the spring of first grade through
the spring of fifth grade, the Hispanic-white gaps narrow slightly to
0.50 standard deviations in math and widening slightly to 0.38
deviations in reading.
In a 2009 study Clotfelter et al. examine test scores of North Carolina public school students by race.
They found that while black-white gaps are substantial, both Hispanic
and Asian students tend to gain on whites as they progress in school.
The white-black achievement gap in both math and reading scores is
around half a standard deviation. By fifth grade, Hispanic and white
students have roughly the same math and reading scores. By eighth grade,
scores for Hispanic students in North Carolina surpassed those of
observationally equivalent whites by roughly a tenth of a standard
deviation. Asian students surpass whites on math and reading tests in
all years except third and fourth grade reading.
In both fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math, African American
students are about two and a half times as likely as white students to
lack basic skills and only about one-third as likely to be proficient or
advanced.
In a 2006 study, LoGerfo, Nichols, and Reardon (2006) found that,
starting in the eighth grade, white students have an initial advantage
in reading achievement over black and Hispanic students but not Asian
students. Using nationally representative data from by the National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES)—the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) and the National
Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88), LoGerfo, Nichols, and Reardon
(2006) find that black students score 5.49 points lower than white
students and Hispanic students score 4.83 points lower than white
students on reading tests. These differences in initial status are
compounded by differences in reading gains made during high school.
Specifically, between ninth and tenth grades, white students gain
slightly more than black students and Hispanic students, but white
students gain less than Asian students. Between tenth and twelfth
grades, white students gain at a slightly faster rate than black
students, but white students gain at a slower rate than Hispanic
students and Asian students.
In eighth grade, white students also have an initial advantage over black and Hispanic students in math tests.
However, Asian students have an initial 2.71 point advantage over white
students and keep pace with white students throughout high school.
Between eighth and tenth grade, black students and Hispanic students
make slower gains in math than white students, and black students fall
farthest behind. Asian students gain 2.71 points more than white
students between eight and tenth grade. Some of these differences in
gains persist later in high school. For example, between tenth and
twelfth grades, white students gain more than black students, and Asian
students gain more than white students. There are no significant
differences in math gains between white students and Hispanic students.
By the end of high school, gaps between groups increase slightly.
Specifically, the initial 9-point advantage of white students over black
students increases by about a point, and the initial advantage of Asian
students over white students also increases by about a point.
Essentially, by the end of high school, Asian students are beginning to
learn intermediate-level math concepts, whereas black and Hispanic
students are far behind, learning fractions and decimals, which are math
concepts that the white and Asian students learned in the eighth grade.
Black and Hispanic students end twelfth grade with scores 11 and 7
points behind those of white students, while the male-female difference
in math scores is only around 2 points.
Standardized test scores
The racial group differences across admissions tests, such as the SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, MCAT, LSAT, Advanced Placement Program
examinations and other measures of educational achievement, have been
fairly consistent. Since the 1960s, the population of students taking
these assessments has become increasingly diverse. Consequently, the
examination of ethnic score differences has been more rigorous.
Specifically, from six large surveys conducted between 1965 and 1992,
the largest gap exists between white and African American students. On
average, they score about .82 to 1.18 standard deviations lower than
white students in composite test scores.
Following closely behind is the gap between white and Hispanic
students. The overall performance of Asian American students was higher
than that of white students, except Asian American students performed
one quarter standard deviation unit lower on the SAT verbal section, and
about one half a standard deviation unit higher in the GRE Quantitative
test.
However, in the current version of the SAT, Asian-American students of Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Indian and Han Chinese
descent have scored higher on both the verbal and math sections of the
new SAT test than whites and all other student racial groups.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports the
national Black-White gap and the Hispanic-White Gap in math and reading
assessments, measured at the 4th and 8th grade level. The trends show
that both gaps widen in mathematics as students grow older, but tend to
stay the same in reading. Furthermore, the NAEP measures the widening
and narrowing of achievement gaps on a state level. From 2007 to 2009,
the achievement gaps for the majority of states stayed the same,
although more fluctuations were seen at the 8th grade level than the 4th
grade level.
The Black-White Gap demonstrates:
- In mathematics, a 26-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 31-point difference at the 8th grade level.
- In reading, a 27-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 26-point difference at the 8th grade level.
The Hispanic White Gap demonstrates:
- In mathematics, a 21-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 26-point difference at the 8th grade level.
- In reading, there is a 25-point difference at the 4th grade level and a 24-point difference at the 8th grade level (NAEP, 2011).
The National Educational Longitudinal Survey (NELS, 1988)
demonstrates similar findings in their evaluation of assessments
administered to 12th graders in reading and math.
Mathematics
Results of the mathematics achievement test:
White-African American gap
Non Hispanic White-Hispanic gap
Reading
Results of the reading achievement test:
White-African American gap
Non Hispanic White-Hispanic gap
SAT scores
Racial
and ethnic variations in SAT scores follow a similar pattern to other
racial achievement gaps. In 1990, the average SAT was 528 for Asian-Americans, 491 for whites, 429 for Mexican Americans and 385 for blacks.
34% of Asians compared with 20% of whites, 3% of blacks, 7% of Mexican
Americans, and 9% of Native Americans scored above a 600 on the SAT math
section.
On the SAT verbal section in 1990, whites scored an average of 442,
compared with 410 for Asians, 352 for blacks, 380 for Mexican Americans,
and 388 for Native Americans.
In 2015, the average SAT scores on the math section were 598 for
Asian-Americans, 534 for whites, 457 for Hispanic Latinos and 428 for blacks.
Additionally, 10% of Asian-Americans, 8% of whites, 3% of Mexican
Americans, 3% of Native Americans and 2% of blacks scored above 600 on
the SAT verbal section in 1990.
Race gaps on the SATs are especially pronounced at the tails of the
distribution. In a perfectly equal distribution, the racial breakdown of
scores at every point in the distribution should ideally mirror the
demographic composition of test-takers as whole i.e. 51% whites, 21%
Hispanic Latinos, 14% blacks, and 14% Asian-Americans. But ironically,
among the highest top scorers, those scoring between a 750 and 800
(perfect scores) over 60% are East Asians of Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and Han Chinese descent, while only 33% are white, compared to 5% Hispanic Latinos and 2% blacks.
There are some limitations to the data which may mean that, if
anything, the race gap is being understated. The ceiling on the SAT
score may, for example, understate the achievement and full potential of
East Asians of Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and Han Chinese descent. If
the exam was redesigned to increase score variance (add harder and
easier questions than it currently has), the achievement gap across
racial groups could be even more wider and pronounced. In other words,
if the math section was scored between 0 and 1000, we might see more
complete tails on both the right and the left. More East Asians score
between 750 and 800 than score between 700 and 750, suggesting that many
East Asians of Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean and Han Chinese descent
could be scoring high above 800 if the test allowed them to.
State standards tests
Most
state tests showing African American failure rates anywhere from two to
four times the rate of whites, such as Washington State's WASL
test, and only half to one-quarter as likely to achieve a high score,
even though these tests were designed to eliminate the negative effects
of bias associated with standardized multiple choice tests. It is a top
goal of education reform to eliminate the Education gap between all races, though skeptics question whether legislation such as No Child Left Behind truly closes the gap just by raising expectations. Others, such as Alfie Kohn, observe it may merely penalize those who do not score as well as the most educated ethnic and income groups.
Scored Level 3 on WASL Washington Assessment of Student Learning, Mathematics Grade 4 (1997) Data: Office Washington State Superintendent of Instruction
| White
|
Black
|
Hispanic
|
Asian
|
Native American
|
| 17.1%
|
4.0%
|
4.3%
|
15.6%
|
1.6%
|
Education attainment
High school
In 2017, 93% of all 18- through 24-year-olds not enrolled in elementary or secondary school had completed high school.
The gap between black and white completion rates narrowed since the
1970s, with completion rates for white students increasing from 86% in
1972 to 95% in 2017, and completion rates for black students rising from
72% in 1972 to 94% in 2017.
High school completion rates by race, 2017
| Asian/Pacific Islander
|
98.6%
|
| White
|
94.8%
|
| Black
|
93.8%
|
| Hispanic
|
88.3%
|
High school dropout rates by race, 2017
| Asian
|
2.1%
|
| White
|
4.3%
|
| Black
|
6.5%
|
| Hispanic
|
8.2%
|
Post-secondary education
As
of 2008, 13 percent of Hispanics adults have earned a bachelor's degree
or higher, compared with 15 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native
adults, 20 percent of blacks, 33 percent of whites, and 52 percent of
Asian Americans. Asians obtain more first professional degrees than any other race. The table below shows the number of degrees awarded for each group.
Post-secondary degree attainment by race, 2008
| Race |
Associate degree |
Bachelor's degree |
Master's degree |
First professional degree |
Cumulative %
|
| Asians
|
6.9%
|
31.6%
|
14.0%
|
6.4%
|
58.9%
|
| Whites
|
9.3%
|
21.1%
|
8.4%
|
3.1%
|
41.9%
|
| Blacks
|
8.9%
|
13.6%
|
4.9%
|
1.3%
|
28.7%
|
| American Indians/Alaska Natives
|
8.4%
|
9.8%
|
3.6%
|
1.4%
|
23.2%
|
| Hispanics
|
6.1%
|
9.4%
|
2.9%
|
1.0%
|
19.4%
|
(Issued August 2003) Educational attainment by race and gender: 2000
Census 2000 Brief
Percent of Adults 25 and over in group
Ranked by advanced degree HS SC BA AD
Asian alone . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.4 64.6 44.1 17.4
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino.. . . . 85.5 55.4 27.0 9.8
White alone... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83.6 54.1 26.1 9.5
Two or more races. . . . . . . . . . . . 73.3 48.1 19.6 7.0
Black or African American alone . . . . . 72.3 42.5 14.3 4.8
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander 78.3 44.6 13.8 4.1
American Indian and Alaska Native alone . . 70.9 41.7 11.5 3.9
Hispanic or Latino (of any race).. . . . . 52.4 30.3 10.4 3.8
Some other race alone . . . . . . . . . . . 46.8 25.0 7.3 2.3
HS = high school completed SC = some college
BA = bachelor's degree AD = advanced degree
In 2018, the overall college enrollment rate of recent high school
graduates for all races was 68%; Asian Americans had the highest
enrollment rate (78%), followed by Whites (70%), Hispanics (63%), and
Blacks (62%).
Asian students also had the highest 6-year college graduation rate
(74%), followed by Whites (64%), Hispanics (54%), and Blacks (40%). Even at prestigious institutions, the graduation rate of white students is higher than that of black students.
The college enrollment rate increased for each racial and ethnic group between 1980 and 2007, but the enrollment rates for Blacks and Hispanics
did not increase at the same rate as among White students. Between 1980
and 2007, the college enrollment rate for Blacks increased from 44% to
56% and the college enrollment rates for Hispanics increased from 50% to
62%. In comparison, the same rate increased from 49.8% to 77.7% for
Whites. There are no data for Asians or American Indians/Alaska Natives
regarding enrollment rates from the 1980s to 2007.
Illiteracy
African
Americans were once denied education. Even as late as 1947, about one
third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy
to read and write their own names. By 1969, however, illiteracy
among African Americans was less than one percent, though African
Americans still lag in more stringent definitions of document literacy.
Inability to read, write or speak English in America today is largely an
issue for immigrants, mostly from Asia and Latin America.
Illiteracy rates by race: 1870 to 1979
| Year
|
White
|
Black
|
| 1870
|
11.5%
|
79.9%
|
| 1880
|
9.4%
|
70.0%
|
| 1890
|
7.7%
|
56.8%
|
| 1900
|
6.2%
|
44.5%
|
| 1910
|
5.0%
|
30.5%
|
| 1920
|
4.0%
|
23.0%
|
| 1930
|
3.0%
|
16.4%
|
| 1940
|
2.0%
|
11.5%
|
| 1947
|
1.8%
|
11.0%
|
| 1952
|
1.8%
|
10.2%
|
| 1959
|
1.6%
|
7.5%
|
| 1969
|
0.7%
|
3.6%
|
| 1979
|
0.4%
|
1.6%
|
Long-term trends
The
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been testing
seventeen-year-olds since 1971. From 1971 to 1996, the black-white
reading gap shrank by almost one half and the math gap by almost one
third.
Specifically, blacks scored an average of 239 points, and whites scored
an average of 291 points on the NAEP reading tests in 1971. In 1990,
blacks scored an average of 267, and whites scored an average of 297
points. On NAEP math tests in 1973, blacks scored an average of 270, and
whites scored 310. In 1990, black average score was 289 and whites
scored an average of 310 points. For Hispanics, the average NAEP math
score for seventeen-year-olds in 1973 was 277 and 310 for whites. In
1990, the average score among Hispanics was 284 compared with 310 for
whites.
Because of small population size in the 1970s, similar trend data
are not available for Asian Americans. Data from the 1990 NAEP
Mathematics Assessment Tests show that among twelfth graders, Asians
scored an average of 315 points compared with 301 points for whites, 270
for blacks, 278 for Hispanics, and 290 for Native Americans.
Racial and ethnic differentiation is most apparent at the highest
achievement levels. Specifically, 13% of Asians performed at level of
350 points or higher, 6% of whites, less than 1% of blacks, and 1% of
Hispanics did so.
The NAEP has since collected and analyzed data through 2008.
Overall, the White-Hispanic and the White-Black gap for NAEP scores have
significantly decreased since the 1970s.
The Black-White Gap demonstrates:
- In mathematics, the gap for 17-year-olds was narrowed by 14 points from 1973 to 2008.
- In reading, the gap for 17-year-olds was narrowed by 24 points from 1971 to 2008.
The Hispanic-White Gap demonstrates:
- In mathematics, the gap for 17-year-olds was narrowed by 12 points from 1973 to 2008.
- In reading, the gap for 17-year-olds was narrowed by 15 points from 1975 to 2008.
Furthermore, subgroups showed predominant gains in 4th grade at all
achievement levels. In terms of achieving proficiency, gaps between
subgroups in most states have narrowed across grade levels, yet had
widened in 23% of instances. The progress made in elementary and middle
schools was greater than that in high schools, which demonstrates the
importance of early childhood education. Greater gains were seen in
lower-performing subgroups rather than in higher-performing subgroups.
Similarly, greater gains were seen in Latino and African American
subgroups than for low-income and Native American subgroups.
- Reading- ages 9 (light gray), 13 (dark gray), and 17 (black).
International comparisons
As a whole, students in the United States lagged the leading Asian and European nations in the TIMSS international math and science test.
However, broken down by race, US Asians scored comparably to Asian
nations, and white Americans scored comparably to leading European
nations. Although some races generally score lower than whites in the
US, they scored as well as whites in European nations: Hispanic
Americans averaged 505, comparable to students in Austria and Sweden,
while African Americans, at 482, were comparable to students in Norway
and Ukraine.
Possible causes
The
achievement gap between low-income minority students and middle-income
white students has been a popular research topic among sociologists
since the publication of the report, "Equality of Educational
Opportunity" (more widely known as the Coleman Report).
This report was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in
1966 to investigate whether the performance of African-American students
was caused by their attending schools of a lesser quality than white
students. The report suggested that both in-school factors and
home/community factors affect the academic achievement of students and
contribute to the achievement gap that exists between races.
The study of the achievement gap can be addressed from two
standpoints—from a supply-side and a demand-side viewpoint of education.
In Poor Economics, Banerjee and Duflo explain the two families of arguments surrounding education of underserved populations.
Demand-side arguments focus on aspects of minority populations that
influence education achievement. These include family background and
culture, which shape perceptions and expectations surrounding education.
A large body of research has been dedicated to studying these factors
contributing to the achievement gap. Supply-side arguments focus on the
provision of education and resources and the systemic structures in
place that perpetuate the achievement gap. These include neighborhoods,
funding, and policy. In 2006, Ladson-Billings called on education
researchers to move the spotlight of education research away from family
background to take into account the rest of the factors that affect
educational achievement, as explained by the Coleman Report.
The concept of opportunity gaps—rather than achievement gaps—has
changed the paradigm of education research to assess education from a
top-down approach.
Social Belonging
A
person's sense of social belonging is one non-cognitive factor that
plays a part in the racial achievement gap. Some of the processes that
threaten a person's sense of belonging in schools include social stigma,
negative intellectual stereotypes, and numeric under-representation.
Walton and Cohen describe three ways in which a sense of social
belonging boosts motivation, the first being positive self-image. By
adopting similar interests as those who a person considers to be
socially significant, it may help to increase or affirm a person's sense
of his or her personal worth.
People have a basic need to belong, which is why people may feel a
sense of distress when social rejection occurs. Students in minority
groups have to battle other factors as well, such as peer and friend
groups being separated by race. Homogeneous friend groups can segregate
people out of important networking connections, thus limiting important
future opportunities that non-minority groups have because they have
access to these networking connections.
Oakland students that come from low socioeconomic families are less
likely to attend schools that provide equal education as wealthier
schools that come from major American cities. This means that only two
of ten students will go to schools that have a closing achievement gap.
Students who do not fall into the majority or dominant group in
their schools often worry about whether or not they will belong and find
a valued place in their school. Their thoughts are often centered
around whether they will be accepted and valued for who they are around
their peers. Social rejection can cause reductions in IQ test performance, self-regulation, and also can prompt aggression.
People can do more together than they can alone. Social life is a form
of collaborative activity, and an important feature of human life. When
goals and objectives become shared, they offer a person and the social
units he or she is a part of major advantages over if he or she was
working alone.
Under performing groups in schools often report that they feel
like they do not belong and that they are unhappy a majority of the
time. Steele offers an example, explaining an observation done by his
colleague, Treisman. It was observed that African American students at
Berkeley did their work independently in their rooms with nobody to
converse with. They spent most of their time checking answers to their
arithmetic in the back of their textbook, weakening their grasp of the
concepts themselves. This ultimately caused these students to do worse
on tests and assessments than their white peers, creating a frustrating
experience and also contributing to the racial achievement gap.
Another explanation that has been suggested for racial and ethnic
differences in standardized test performance is that some minority
children may not be motivated to do their best on these assessments.
Many argue that standardized IQ tests and other testing procedures are
culturally biased toward the knowledge and experiences of the
European-American middle class.
Purpose
When
students feel that what they are doing has purpose, they are more likely
to succeed academically. Students who identify and actively work
towards their individual, purposeful, life goals have a better chance at
eliminating disengagement that commonly occurs in middle school and
continues into later adolescence.
These life goals give students a chance to believe that their school
work is done in hopes of achieving larger, more long-term goals that
matter to the world. This also gives students the opportunity to feel
that their lives have meaning by working towards these goals.
Purposeful life goals, such as work goals, may also increase
students motivation to learn. Adolescents may make connections between
what they are learning in school and how they will use those skills and
knowledge will help them make an impact in the future. This idea
ultimately will lead students to create their own goals related to
mastering the material they are learning in school.
Adolescents who have goals and believe that their opinions and
voices can impact the world positively may become more motivated. They
become more committed to mastering concepts and being accountable for
their own learning, rather than focusing on getting the highest grade in
the class.
Students will study more intently and deeply, as well as persist
longer, seeking out more challenges. They will like learning more
because the tasks they are doing have purpose, creating a personal
meaning to them and in turn leading to satisfaction.
Mindset
Carol Dweck,
professor of psychology at Stanford University, suggests that students'
mindsets (how they perceive their own abilities) play a large role in
educational achievement and motivation. An adolescent's level of self-efficacy
is a great predictor of their level of academic performance, going
above and beyond a student's measured level of ability and also their
prior performance in school.
Students having a growth mindset believe that their intelligence can be
developed over time. Those with a fixed mindset believe that their
intelligence is fixed and cannot grow and develop. Students with growth
mindsets tend to outperform their peers who have fixed mindsets.
Dweck points out that teachers have a high degree of influence on
which kind of mindset a student develops in school. When people are
taught with a growth mindset, the ideas of challenging themselves and
putting in more effort follow.
People believe that each mindset is better than the other, which causes
students to feel that they are not as good as other students in school.
A big question that is asked in schooling is when does someone feel
smart: when they are flawless or when they are learning?
With a fixed mindset, you must be flawless, and not just smart in the
classroom. With this mindset, there is even more pressure on students to
not only succeed, but to be flawless in front of their peers.
Students who have a fixed mindset, have come to change the idea of failure as an action to an identity.
They come to think of the idea of failing something as being that they
are a failure and that they cannot achieve something. This links back
into how they think of themselves as a person and decreases their
motivation in school. This sense of "failure" is especially prominent
during adolescence. If one thing goes wrong, one with a fixed mindset
will feel that they cannot overcome this small failure, and thus their
mindset motivation will decrease.
Structural and institutional factors
Different
schools have different effects on similar students. Children of color
tend to be concentrated in low-achieving, highly segregated schools. In
general, minority students are more likely to come from low-income
households, meaning minority students are more likely to attend poorly
funded schools based on the districting patterns within the school
system. Schools in lower-income districts tend to employ less qualified
teachers and have fewer educational resources.
Research shows that teacher effectiveness is the most important
in-school factor affecting student learning. Good teachers can actually
close or eliminate the gaps in achievement on the standardized tests
that separate white and minority students.
Schools also tend to place students in tracking
groups as a means of tailoring lesson plans for different types of
learners. However, as a result of schools placing emphasis on
socioeconomic status and cultural capital, minority students are vastly
over-represented in lower educational tracks.
Similarly, Hispanic and African American students are often wrongly
placed into lower tracks based on teachers' and administrators'
expectations for minority students. Such expectations of a race within
school systems are a form of institutional racism. Some researchers compare the tracking system to a modern form of racial segregation within the schools.
Studies on tracking groups within schools have also proven to be detrimental for minority students.
Once students are in these lower tracks, they tend to have
less-qualified teachers, a less challenging curriculum, and few
opportunities to advance into higher tracks.
There is also some research that suggests students in lower tracks
suffer from social psychological consequences of being labeled as a
slower learner, which often leads children to stop trying in school. In fact, many sociologists argue that tracking in schools does not provide any lasting benefits to any group of students.
The practice of awarding low grades and test scores to children
who struggle causes low-performing children to experience anxiety,
demoralization, and a loss of control. This undermines performance,
and may explain why the achievement gap increases over the school
years, and why the interventions implemented thus far seem to have
failed to close it.
School funding and geography
The
quality of school that a student attends and the socioeconomic status
of the student's residential neighborhood are two factors that can
affect a student's academic performance.
In the United States, only 8% of public education funding comes
from the federal government. The other 92% comes from local, state, and
private sources.
Local funding is considered unequal as it is based on property taxes.
So those who are in areas in which there is lower property value have
less funded schools, making schools unequal within a district. This system means that schools located in areas with lower real estate
values have proportionately less money to spend per pupil than schools
located in areas with higher real estate values. This system has also
maintained a "funding segregation": because minority students are much
more likely to live in a neighborhood with lower property values, they
are much more likely to attend a school that receives significantly
lower funding.
Data from research shows that when the quality of the school is
better and students are given more resources, it reduces the racial
achievement gap. When white and black schools were given the equal
amount of resources, it shows that black students started improving
while white students stayed the same because they didn't need the
resources. This showed that lack of resources is a factor in the racial
achievement gap.
The research that was conducted shows that predominantly white schools
have more resources than black schools. However, lack of resources is
only a small effect on academic achievement in comparison to students'
family backgrounds.
Using property taxes to fund public schools contributes to school
inequality. Lower-funded schools are more likely to have lower-paid
teachers; higher student-teacher ratios, meaning less individual
attention for each student; older books; fewer extracurricular
activities, which have been shown to increase academic achievement;
poorly maintained school facilities; and less access to services like
school nursing and social workers. All of these factors can affect
student performance and perpetuate inequalities between students of
different races.
Living in a high-poverty or disadvantaged neighborhood have been
shown to negatively influence educational aspirations and consequently
attainment. The Moving to Opportunity
experiment showed that moving to a low-poverty neighborhood had a
positive effect on the educational attainment of minority adolescents.
The school characteristics associated with the low-poverty neighborhoods
proved to be effective mediators, since low-poverty neighborhoods
tended to have more favorable school composition, safety, and quality.
Additionally, living in a neighborhood with economic and social
inequalities leads to negative attitudes and more problematic behavior
due to and social tensions. Greater college aspirations have been correlated with more social cohesiveness
among neighborhood youth, since community support from both youth and
adults in the neighborhood tends to have a positive influence on
educational aspirations.
Some researchers believe that vouchers should be given to low income
students so they can go to school in other places. However, other
researchers believe that the idea of vouchers promotes equality and
doesn't eliminate it.
Racial and ethnic residential segregation
in the United States still persists, with African Americans
experiencing the highest degree of residential segregation, followed by
Latino Americans and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
This isolation from white American communities is highly correlated
with low property values and high-poverty neighborhoods. This issue is
propagated by issues of home ownership facing minorities, especially
African Americans and Latino Americans, since residential areas
predominantly populated by these minority groups are perceived as less
attractive in the housing market. Home ownership by minority groups is
further undermined by institutionalized discriminatory practices, such
as differential treatment of African Americans and Latino Americans in
the housing market compared with white Americans. Higher mortgages
charged to African American or Latino American buyers make it more
difficult for members of these minority groups to attain full home
ownership and accumulate wealth. As a result, African American and
Latino American groups continue to live in racially segregated
neighborhoods and face the socioeconomic consequences of residential
segregation.
Differences in the academic performance of African-American and
white students exist even in schools that are desegregated and diverse,
and studies have shown that a school's racial mix does not seem to have
much effect on changes in reading scores after sixth grade, or on math
scores at any age.
In fact, minority students in segregated-minority schools have more
optimism and greater educational aspirations as well as achievements
than minority students in segregated-white schools. This can be
attributed to various factors, including the attitudes of faculty and
staff at segregated-white schools and the effect of stereotype threat.
Education Debt
Education debt is a theory developed by Gloria Ladson-Billings,
a pedagogical theorist, to attempt to explain the racial achievement
gap. As defined by a colleague of Ladson-Billings, Professor Emeritus
Robert Haveman, education debt is the "foregone schooling resources that
we could have (should have) been investing in (primarily) low income
kids, which deficit leads to a variety of social problems (e.g. crime,
low productivity, low wages, low labor force participation) that require
on-going public investment". The education debt theory has historical, economic, sociopolitical and moral components.
Parenting influence
Parenting methods are different across cultures, thus can have dramatic influence on educational outcomes.
For instance, Asian parents often apply strict rules and parental
authoritarianism to their children while many white American parents
deem creativity and self-sufficiency to be more valuable. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
by Yale Professor Amy Chua highlights some of the very important
aspects in East Asian parenting method in comparison to the "American
way". Chua's book has generated interests and controversies in the
"Tiger Mom" parenting method and its role in determining children's
education outcomes. Many Hispanic parents and their children believe that a college degree is necessary for obtaining stable and meaningful work.
This attitude is reflected in the educational expectations parents hold
for their children and in the expectations that young people have for
themselves (U.S. Department of Education, 1995b, p. 88).
High educational expectations can be found among all racial and ethnic
groups regardless of their economic and social resources (p. 73).
Although parents and children share high educational aims, their
aspirations do not necessarily translate into postsecondary
matriculation. This is especially the case for Hispanic high school
students, particularly those whose parents have not attended college.
Parental involvement in children's education is influential to children's success at school.
Teachers often view low parental involvement as a barrier to student
success. Collaboration between teachers and parents is necessary when
working to help a child; parents have the necessary knowledge of what is
best for their child's situation.
However, the student body in schools is diverse, and although teachers
make an effort to try and understand each child's unique cultural
beliefs, it is important that they are meeting with parents to get a
clear understanding of what needs should be met in order for the student
to succeed. School administrators must accommodate and account for
family differences and also be supportive by promoting ways families can
get involved. For example, schools can provide support by accommodating
the needs of the family who have do not have transportation, schools
may do so by providing external resources that may benefit the family.
As referenced by Feliciano et al. (2016), educators can also account
for culture by providing education about the diversity at the school.
This can be achieved by creating an environment where both teachers and
students learn about cultures represented among the student population.
Larocquem et al. (2011) stated that family involvement may
include visiting their children's class, being involved with a parent
teacher organization, attending school activities, speaking to the
child's class, and volunteering at school events. It is also important
for families to be involved with the child's school assignments,
especially by holding them accountable for completion and discussion of
the work assigned.
Also, educators may want to consider how parental language barriers and
educational experiences affect families and the influence of
contributing to their child's education.
In addition, even when families want to get involved, they may not know
how to collaborate with school personnel, especially for families who
are Hispanic, African American, and or of low economic status.
A study done by Nistler and Maiers (2000), found that although
different barriers for families may inhibit participation, families
reported that they would want to participate nonetheless.
Larocque et al. (2011) suggest that teachers need to find out what
values and expectations are held for the child, which should be done by
involving parents in the decision-making process.
Children can differ in their readiness to learn before they enter school.
Research has shown that parental involvement in a child's development
has a significant effect on the educational achievement of minority
children. According to sociologist Annette Lareau, differences in parenting styles can affect a child's future achievement. In her book Unequal Childhoods, she argues that there are two main types of parenting: concerted cultivation and the achievement of natural growth.
- Concerted cultivation
is usually practiced by middle-class parents, regardless of their race.
These parents are more likely to be involved in their children's
education, encourage their children's participation in extracurricular
activities or sports teams, and to teach their children how to
successfully communicate with authority figures. These communication
skills give children a form of social capital that help them communicate
their needs and negotiate with adults throughout their life.
- The achievement of natural growth is generally practiced by poor and
working-class families. These parents generally do not play as large a
role in their children's education, their children are less likely to
participate in extracurriculars or sports teams, and they usually do not
teach their children the communication skills that middle- and
upper-class children have. Instead, these parents are more concerned
that their children obey authority figures and have respect for
authority, which are two characteristics that are important to have in
order to succeed in working-class jobs.
The parenting practices that a child is raised with influences their
future educational achievement. However, parenting styles are heavily
influenced by the parents' and family's social, economic, and physical
circumstances. In particular, immigration status (if applicable),
education level, incomes, and occupations influence the degree of
parental involvement their children's academic achievement.
These factors directly determine the access of the parents to time and
resources to dedicate to their children's development. These factors
also indirectly determine the home environment and parents' educational
expectations of their children.
For example, children from poor families have lower academic
performance in kindergarten than children from middle to upper-class
backgrounds, but children from poor families who had cognitively
stimulating materials in the home demonstrated higher rates of academic
achievement in kindergarten. Additionally, parents of children living in
poverty are less likely to have cognitively stimulating materials in
the home for their children and are less likely to be involved in their
child's school.
The quality of language that the student uses is affected by family's
socioeconomic backgrounds, which is another factor in the academic
achievement gap.
Preschool education
Additionally,
poor and minority students have disproportionately less access to
high-quality early childhood education, which has been shown to have a
strong impact on early learning and development. One study found that
although black children are more likely to attend preschool than white
children, they may experience lower-quality care.
The same study also found that Hispanic children in the U.S. are much
less likely to attend preschool than white children. Another study
conducted in Illinois in 2010
found that only one in three Latino parents could find a preschool slot
for his or her child, compared to almost two thirds of other families.
Finally, according to the National Institute for Early Education
Research (NIEER), families with modest incomes (less than $60,000) have
the least access to preschool education.
Research suggests that dramatic increases in both enrollment and
quality of prekindergarten programs would help to alleviate the school
readiness gap and ensure that low-income and minority children begin
school on even footing with their peers.
Income
In the United States, socioeconomic status of families affects children schooling.
Sociologist Laura Perry found what she calls 'Student Socioeconomic
Status' has the third strongest influence on educational outcomes in the
United States out of nations within this study and it ranked sixth in
influence of equity differences among schools. These families are more susceptible to multidimensional poverty,
meaning the three dimensions of poverty, health, education, and
standard of living are interconnected to give an overall assessment of a
nations poverty.
Some researchers, such as Katherine Paschall, argue that family
income plays more of a factor in the academic achievement gap than
race/ethnicity.
However, other studies find that the racial gaps persists between
families of different race and ethnicity that have similar incomes. When
comparing white students from families with incomes below $10,000 they
had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than African
American students whose families had incomes between $80,000 and
$100,000. This means that there are more contributing factors than just economic status.
Conservative African American scholars such as Thomas Sowell observe that while SAT scores are lower for students with less parental education and income,
Asian Americans who took the SAT with incomes below $10,000 score 482
in math in 1995, comparable to whites earning $30–40,000 and higher and
blacks over $70,000.
Similarly, a later study reveals that for the 2003 college bound
cohort, Black test-takers with more than $100,000 in family income have
mean SAT math and verbal scores of 490 and 495 respectively, and this is
comparable with the scores of the White test-takers with
$20,000-$25,000 in family income (493 and 495). Test scores in middle-income black communities, such as Charles County and Prince George's County, are still not comparable to those in non-black suburbs.
Economic factors were identified as lack of online course access (McCoy, 2012) and online course attrition which indicated before (Liu et al., 2007). Based on the National Center for Educational Statistic (2015),
about half of African American male students grew up in single-parent
households. They are associated with higher incidences of poverty, which
leads to poorer educational outcomes (Child Trends Databank, 2015).
Low-income households tend to have fewer home computers and less access
to the Internet (Zickuhr & Smith, 2012).
Cultural differences
Some
experts believe that cultural factors contribute to the racial
achievement gap. Students from minority cultures face language barriers,
differences in cultural norms in interactions, learning styles, varying
levels of receptiveness of their culture to white American culture, and
varying levels of acceptance of the white American culture by the
students. In particular, it has been found that minority students from
cultures with views that generally do not align with the mainstream
cultural views have a harder time in school.
Furthermore, views of the value of education differ by minority groups
as well as members within each group. Both Hispanic and African-American
youths often receive mixed messages about the importance of education,
and often end up performing below their academic potential.
Online education
Achievement
gaps between African American students and White students in online
classes tend to be greater than regular class. Expanding from 14% in
1995 to 22% in 2015 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). Possible causes include differences in socio-economic status (Palmer et al., 2013), academic performance differences (Osborne, 2001), technology inaccessibility (Fairlie, 2012), lack of online technical support (Rovai & Gallien, 2005), and anxiety towards racial stereotyping (Osborne, 2001).
Nowadays, there is a growing population of students who use
online education, and the number of institutions which offering fully
online degrees is also increasing. According to several studies, online
education probably could create an environment where there is less
cultural division and negative stereotypes of African Americans, thus
protecting those students who have had bad experiences. In addition, the
influence technology and user skills and so as economics and academic
influences are tightly bonded, that may have positively contributed to
African American online learners experience. However, it appears African
American male students are less likely to enroll in online classes.
Latino American cultural factors
Many
Hispanic parents who immigrate to The United States see a high school
diploma as being a sufficient amount of schooling and may not stress the
importance of continuing on to college. Parental discouragement from
pursuing higher education tends to be based on the notion of "we made it
without formal schooling, so you can too". Additionally, depending on
the immigration generation and economic status of the student, some
students prioritize their obligations to assisting their family over
their educational aspirations. Poor economic circumstances place greater
pressure on the students to sacrifice time spent working towards
educational attainment in order to dedicate more time to help support
the family. Surveys have shown that while Latino American families would
like their children to have a formal education, they also place high
value on getting jobs, marrying, and having children as early as
possible, all of which conflict with the goal of educational
achievement.
However, counselors and teachers usually promote continuing on to
college. This message conflicts with the one being sent to Hispanic
students by their families and can negatively affect the motivation of
Hispanic students, as evidenced by the fact that Latinos have the lowest
college attendance rates of any racial/ethnic group.
Overall, Latino American students face barriers such as financial
stability and insufficient support for higher education within their
families. Reading to children when they are younger increases literacy
comprehension, which is a fundamental concept in the education system;
however, it is less likely to occur within Latino American families
because many parents do not have any formal education. Currently, Latino
Americans over the age of 25 have the lowest percentage in obtaining a
bachelor's degree or higher amongst all other racial groups; while only
having 11 percent.
Disadvantages in a child's early life can cultivate into
achievement gaps in their education. Poverty, coupled with the
environment they are raised in, can lead to shortcomings in educational
achievement. Despite strong standards and beliefs in education, Hispanic
children consistently perform poorly, reflected by a low average of
math and reading scores, as compared to other groups except African
American.
Hispanic and African American children have been shown to be more
likely to be raised in poverty, with 33% of Hispanic families living
below the economic poverty level, compared to African American (39%), Asian (14%) and White (13%) counterparts.
Children who are raised in poverty are less likely to be enrolled in
nursery or preschool. Though researchers are seeing improvements in
achievement levels, such as a decrease in high school dropout rates
(from 24% to 17%) and a steady increase in math and reading scores over
the past 10 years, there are still issues that must be addressed.
There is a common misconception that Hispanic parents are not
involved in their child's education and fail to transmit strong
educational values to their children. However, there is evidence that
Hispanic parents actually hold their children's education in high value.
The majority of Hispanic children are affected by immigration. It affects recent immigrants as well as the children of immigrants.
Both recent immigrants and the children of immigrants are faced with
language barriers and other migration obstacles. A study explored the
unique situation and stressors recent Latin American immigrants face.
Hispanic students showed lower academic achievement, more absences, and
more life stressors than their counterparts. In 2014–2015, 77.8% of Hispanic children were English Language learners.
This can be problematic because children may not have parents who speak
English at home to help with language acquisition. Immigration
struggles can be used as a motivator for students. Immigrant parents
appeal to their children and hold high expectations because of the
"gift" they are bestowing on them. They immigrated and sacrificed their
lives so their children can succeed, and this framework is salient in
encouraging children to pursue their education. Parents use their
struggles and occupation to encourage a better life.
Parental involvement
has been shown to increase educational success and attainment for
students. For example, parental involvement in elementary school has
been shown to lower high school dropout rates and improved on time
completion of high school.
A common misconception is that Latino parents don't hold their
children's education in high regards (Valencia, 2002), but this has been
debunked. Parents show their values in education by holding high
academic expectations and giving "consejos" or advice. In 2012, 97% of
families reported teaching their children letters, words or numbers. A study reported that parent involvement during adolescence continues to be as influential as in early childhood.
African American cultural factors
The
culture and environment in which children are raised may play a role in
the achievement gap. Jencks and Phillips argue that African American
parents may not encourage early education in toddlers because they do
not see the personal benefits of having exceptional academic skills. As a
result of cultural differences, African American students tend to begin
school with smaller vocabularies than their white classmates.
Hart and Risley calculated a "30 million word gap" between children of
high school dropouts and those of professionals who are college
educated. The differences are qualitative as well as quantitative, with
differences in "unique" words, complexity, and "conversational turns."
However, poverty often acts as a confounding factor and
differences that are assumed to arise from racial/cultural factors may
be socioeconomically driven, as can be seen by a study where
immigrant-origin Black undergraduates outperformed U.S.-origin Black
undergraduates until socioeconomic status was taken into account.
Many children who are poor, regardless of race, come from homes that
lack stability, continuity of care, adequate nutrition, and medical care
creating a level of environmental stress that can affect the young
child's development. As a result, these children enter school with
decreased word knowledge that can affect their language skills,
influence their experience with books, and create different perceptions
and expectations in the classroom context.
Studies show that when students have parental assistance with homework, they perform better in school.
This is a problem for many minority students due to the large number of
single-parent households (67% of African-American children are in a
single-parent household)
and the increase in non-English speaking parents. Students from
single-parent homes often find it difficult to find time to receive help
from their parent. Similarly, some Hispanic students have difficulty
getting help with their homework because there is not an English speaker
at home to offer assistance.
African American students are also likely to receive different
messages about the importance of education from their peer group and
from their parents. Many young African-Americans are told by their
parents to concentrate on school and do well academically, which is
similar to the message that many middle-class white students receive.
However, the peers of African-American students are more likely to place
less emphasis on education, sometimes accusing studious
African-American students of "acting white".
This causes problems for black students who want to pursue higher
levels of education, forcing some to hide their study or homework habits
from their peers and perform below their academic potential.
As some researchers point out, minority students may feel little
motivation to do well in school because they do not believe it will pay
off in the form of a better job or upward social mobility. By not trying to do well in school, such students engage in a rejection of the achievement ideology
– that is, the idea that working hard and studying long hours will pay
off for students in the form of higher wages or upward social mobility.
Asian American cultural factors
Asian American students are more likely to view education as a means to social mobility and career advancement.
It may also provide a means to overcome discrimination as well as
language barriers. This notion comes from cultural expectations and
parental expectations of their children, which are rooted in the
cultural belief that education and hard work is the key to educational
and eventually occupational attainment. Many Asian Americans immigrated
to the United States voluntarily, in search for better opportunities.
This immigration status comes into play when assessing the cultural
views of Asian Americans since attitudes of more recent immigration are
associated with optimistic views about the correlation between hard work
and success. Obstacles such as language barriers and acceptance of
white American culture are more easily overcome by voluntary immigrants
since their expectations of attaining better opportunities in the United
States influence their interactions and experiences.
Students that identify as Asian American believe that having a good
education would also help them speak out against racism based on the
model-minority stereotype.
Factors specific to refugees
Part
of the racial achievement gap can be attributed to the experience of
the refugee population in the United States. Refugee groups in
particular face obstacles such as cultural and language barriers and
discrimination, in addition to migration-related stresses. These factors
affect how successfully refugee children can assimilate to and succeed
in the United States.
Furthermore, it has been shown that immigrant children from politically
unstable countries do not perform as well as immigrant children from
politically stable countries.
Genetic factors
Scientific
consensus tells us that there is no genetic component behind
differences in academic achievement between racial groups. However, pseudoscientific
claims that certain racial groups are intellectually superior and
others inferior continue to circulate. A recent example is Herrnstein
and Murray's 1994 book The Bell Curve, which controversially claimed that variation in average levels of intelligence
(IQ) between racial groups are genetic in origin, and that this may
explain some portion of the racial disparities in achievement. The book has been described by many academics as a restatement of previously debunked "scientific racism", and was condemned by both literary reviewers and academics within related fields.
The consensus view among scientists is that there is no difference in
inherent cognitive ability between different races, and that environment
is at the root of the achievement gap.
Implications
Sociologists Christopher Jencks
and Meredith Phillips have argued that narrowing the black-white test
score gap "would do more to move [the United States] toward racial
equality than any politically plausible alternative". There is also strong evidence that narrowing the gap would have a significant positive economic and social impact.
Economic outcomes
The
racial achievement gap has consequences on the life outcomes of
minority students. However, this gap also has the potential for negative
implications for American society as a whole, especially in terms of
workforce quality and the competitiveness of the American economy.
As the economy has become more globalized and the United States'
economy has shifted away from manufacturing and towards a
knowledge-based economy, education has become an increasingly important
determinant of economic success and prosperity. A strong education is
now essential for preparing and training the future workforce that is
able to compete in the global economy. Education is also important for
attaining jobs and a stable career, which is critical for breaking the cycle of poverty
and securing a sound economic future, both individually and as a
nation. Students with lower achievement are more likely to drop out of
high school, entering the workforce with minimal training and skills,
and subsequently earning substantially less than those with more
education. Therefore, eliminating the racial achievement gap and
improving the achievement of minority students will help eliminate
economic disparities and ensure that America's future workforce is well
prepared to be productive and competitive citizens.
Reducing the racial achievement gap is especially important
because the United States is becoming an increasingly diverse country.
The percentage of African-American and Hispanic students in school is
increasing: in 1970, African-Americans and Hispanics made up 15% of the
school-age population, and that number had increased to 30% by 2000. It
is expected that minority students will represent the majority of school
enrollments by 2015.
Minorities make up a growing share of America's future workforce;
therefore, the United States' economic competitiveness depends heavily
on closing the racial achievement gap.
The racial achievement gap affects the volume and quality of
human capital, which is also reflected through calculations of GDP. The
cost of racial achievement gap accounts for 2–4 percent of the 2008 GDP.
This percentage is likely to increase as blacks and Hispanics continue
to account for a higher proportion of the population and workforce.
Furthermore, it was estimated that $310 billion would be added to the US
economy by 2020 if minority students graduated at the same rate as
white students.
Even more substantial is the narrowing of educational achievement
levels in the US compared to those of higher-achieving nations, such as
Finland and Korea. McKinsey & Company estimate a $1.3 trillion to
$2.3 trillion, or a 9 to 16 percent difference in GDP.
Furthermore, if high school dropouts were to cut in half, over $45
billion would be added in savings and additional revenue. In a single
high school class, halving the dropout rate would be able to support
over 54,000 new jobs, and increase GDP by as much as $9.6 billion. Overall, the cost of high school drop outs on the US economy is roughly $355 billion.
$3.7 billion would be saved on community college remediation
costs and lost earnings if all high school students were ready for
college. Furthermore, if high school graduation rates for males raised
by 5 percent, cutting back on crime spending and increasing earnings
each year would lead to an $8 billion increase the US economy.
A 2009 report by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company asserts that the persistence of the achievement gap in the U.S. has the economic effect of a "permanent national recession."
The report claims that if the achievement gap between black and Latino
performance and white student performance had been narrowed, GDP in 2008
would have been $310 billion to $525 billion higher (2–4 percent).
If the gap between low-income students and their peers had been
narrowed, GDP in the same year would have been $400 billion to $670
billion higher (3–5 percent). In addition to the potential increase in
GDP, the report projects that closing the achievement gap would lead to
cost savings in areas outside of education, such as incarceration and
healthcare. The link between low school performance and crime, low
earnings and poor health has been echoed in academic research.
Job opportunities
As
the United States' economy has moved towards a globalized
knowledge-based economy, education has become even more important for
attaining jobs and a stable career, which is critical for breaking the
cycle of poverty and securing a sound economic future. The racial
achievement gap can hinder job attainment and social mobility for
minority students. The United States Census Bureau reported $62,545 as the median income of white families, $38,409 of Black families, and $39,730 for Hispanic families.
And while the median income of Asian families is $75,027, the number of
people working in these households is usually greater than that in
white American families. The difference in income levels relate highly to educational opportunities between various groups.
Students who drop out of high school as a result of the racial
achievement gap demonstrate difficulty in the job market. The median
income of young adults who do not finish high school is about $21,000,
compared to the $30,000 of those who have at least earned a high school
credential. This translates into a difference of $630,000 in the course
of a lifetime.
Students who are not accepted or decide not to attend college as a
result of the racial achievement gap may forgo over $450,000 in lifetime
earnings had they earned a Bachelor of Arts degree.
In 2009, $36,000 was the median income for those with an associate
degree was, $45,000 for those with a bachelor's degree, $60,000 for
those with a master's degree or higher.
Stereotype threat
Beyond
differences in earnings, minority students also experience stereotype
threats that negatively affects performance through activation of
salient racial stereotypes. The stereotype threat both perpetuates and is caused by the achievement gap. Furthermore, students of low academic performance demonstrate low expectations for themselves and self-handicapping tendencies. Psychologists Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Steven Spencer, have found that Microaggression
such as passing reminders that someone belongs to one group or another
(i.e.: a group stereotyped as inferior in academics) can affect test
performance.
Steele, Aronson and Spencer, have examined and performed
experiments to see how stereotypes can threaten how students evaluate
themselves, which then alters academic identity and intellectual
performance. Steele tested the stereotype threat theory by giving Black
and white college students a half-hour test using difficult questions
from the verbal Graduate Record Examination
(GRE). In the stereotype-threat condition, they told students the test
diagnosed intellectual ability. In saying that the test diagnoses
intellectual ability it can potentially elicit the stereotype that
Blacks are less intelligent than whites. In the no-stereotype-threat
condition, they told students that the test was a problem-solving lab
task that said nothing about ability. This made stereotypes irrelevant.
In the stereotype threat condition, Blacks who were evenly matched with
whites in their group by SAT scores, performed worse compared to their
white counterparts. In the experiments with no stereotype threat, Blacks
performed slightly better than in those with a stereotype threat,
though still significantly worse than whites. Aronson believes the study
of stereotype threat offers some "exciting and encouraging answers to
these old questions [of achievement gaps] by looking at the psychology
of stigma -- the way human beings respond to negative stereotypes about
their racial or gender group".
Claude M. Steele suggested that minority children and adolescents may also experience stereotype threat—the
fear that they will be judged to have traits associated with negative
appraisals and/or stereotypes of their race or ethnic group. According
to this theory, this produces test anxiety
and keeps them from doing as well as they could on tests. According to
Steele, minority test takers experience anxiety, believing that if they
do poorly on their test they will confirm the stereotypes about inferior
intellectual performance of their minority group. As a result, a self-fulfilling prophecy begins, and the child performs at a level beneath his or her inherent abilities.
Political representation
Another
consequence of the racial achievement gap can be seen in the lack of
representation of minority groups in public office. Studies have shown
that higher socioeconomic status—in terms of income, occupation, and/or
educational attainment—is correlated with higher participation in
politics.
This participation is defined as "individual or collective action at
the national or local level that supports or opposes state structures,
authorities, and/or decisions regarding allocation of public goods"; this action ranges from engaging in activities such as voting in elections to running for public office.
Since median income per capita for minority groups (except
Asians) is lower than that of white Americans, and since minority groups
(except Asians) are more likely to occupy less gainful employment and
achieve lower education levels, there is a lowered likelihood of
political participation among minority groups. Education attainment is
highly correlated with earnings and occupation.
And there is a proven disparity between educational attainment of white
Americans and minority groups, with only 30% of bachelor's degrees
awarded in 2009 to minority groups. Thus socioeconomic status—and therefore political participation—is correlated with race.
Research has shown that African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian
Americans are less politically active, by varying degrees, than white
Americans.
A consequence of underrepresentation of minority groups in
leadership is incongruence between policy and community needs. A study
conducted by Kenneth J. Meier and Robert E. England of 82 of the largest
urban school districts in the United States showed that African
American membership on the school board of these districts led to more
policies encouraging more African American inclusion in policy
considerations.
It has been shown that both passive and active representation of
minority groups serves to align constituent policy preference and
representation of these opinions, and thereby facilitate political
empowerment of these groups.
Special programs
Achievement gaps among students may also manifest themselves in the racial and ethnic composition of special education and gifted education
programs. Typically, African American and Hispanic students are
enrolled in greater numbers in special education programs than their
numbers would indicate in most populations, while these groups are
underrepresented in gifted programs.
Research shows that these disproportionate enrollment trends may be a
consequence of the differences in educational achievement among groups.
Efforts to narrow the achievement gap
The
United States has seen a variety of different attempts to narrow the
racial achievement gap. These attempts include focusing on the
importance of early childhood education, using federal standards based
reforms, and implementing institutional changes. Despite the fact that
there are efforts to narrow the achievement gap, the consequences of the
achievement gap will still be felt for many years. For instance, The
Oakland achievement gap grew by 11 percent between 2011 and 2013. This
rate is alarming because it is a quicker pace than 80 percent of other
major nationwide cities. This means that Oakland's achievement gap is
larger than half of California's cities. However, attempts to narrow the achievement gap have been met with resistance. For example, in August 2020, the US Justice Department argued that Yale University discriminated against Asian candidates on the basis of their race, a charge the university denied.
Explanations for the achievement gap and concerns over its
effects and even the existence of such a gap are widely contested.
These explanations are also the source of much controversy, especially
since efforts to "close the gap" have become some of the more
politically prominent education reform issues. The issues that the
achievement gap perpetuate also hold politically charged issues. For
example, the cause of the Latino education crisis is not attributable to
any single factor. It is likely the result of multiple variables—all of
which can have an effect on one another—ranging from social, economic,
and educational conditions to inadequate social services and families
with exceptionally low human and social capital. The effects of the
achievement gap in school can be seen later in life for students. For
example, since schools often lack the resources to meet many students'
most basic educational needs and since there are few entry level jobs
that provide a living wage and benefits available to those without
higher education or special skills in the economy, many are left at a
disadvantage.
The following attempts have all been made in order to counteract the
effects of the achievement gap at schools. They range from nationwide,
government-led initiatives to smaller school-based initiatives.
Early childhood education
There
are large cognitive and emotional gaps that form at early ages. They
persist throughout childhood and strongly influence adult outcomes.
The gaps originate before formal schooling begins and persists through
childhood and into adulthood. Children who score poorly on tests of
cognitive skills before starting kindergarten are highly likely to be
low performers throughout their school careers.
The evidence of the early appearance of the gap has led to efforts
focused on early childhood interventions. Remediating the problems
created by the gaps is not as cost effective as preventing them at the
outset.
Eight psychologists performed an experiment of infant children born in
Quebec in 1997/1998 and followed annually until 7 years of age. Children
receiving formal childcare were distinguished from those receiving
informal childcare. Children of mothers with low levels of education
showed a consistent pattern of lower scores on academic readiness and
achievement tests at 6 and 7 years than those of highly educated
mothers, unless they received formal childcare. The findings provide
further evidence suggesting that formal childcare could represent a
preventative means of attenuating effects of disadvantage on children's
early academic trajectory. Economic research shows that investment at
this stage is both more effective and cost effective than interventions
later in a child's life.
An evaluation of Chicago Public Schools' federally funded Child Parent
Centers find that for every $1 invested in the preschool program,
nearly $11 is projected to return to society over the participants'
lifetimes. This amount is equivalent to an 18% annual return.
Head Start Program, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA), and various state-funded pre-kindergarten programs target
students from low-income families in an attempt to equal the playing
field for these children before school begins. In addition to increased
access, there has also an increased national focus on raising quality
standards for Head Start and state-funded pre-K programs, and in
improving training and professional development for early care
providers.
There is substantial evidence pointing to early childhood development
playing a huge role in closing the achievement gap: various studies,
including the Carolina Abecedarian study, Child-Parent Center study, and
HighScope Perry Preschool study, have shown that pre-K programs can
have a positive and long-lasting impact on academic achievement of
low-income and minority students.
Furthermore, the role of early childhood education and development has
been tied to success even out of the classroom. Pre-K programs help
students develop social, emotional, and critical thinking skills at a
young age, and while none of this prevents the effects of poverty, it
does help in dampening the effects while also better preparing student
for their future. Evaluations of Head Start have reported positive results. However, fade-out effects were found in Head Start.
Critics question whether an emphasis on early childhood education
will benefit long-term kindergarten through 12th grade learning.
Critics point to fade-out effects found in Head Start.
Adam Schaeffer, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute highlights
research shows that students make some gains in the first two years
after preschool but it fades out after.
Recent literature also reveals positive, short-term effects of early
childhood education on children's development that weaken over time.
However, Mary Ellen McGuire, an education policy director at think tank
New America Foundations, pointed out that early childhood education
isn't intended to be a silver-bullet fix to the educational system. It
is merely one aspect.
In order for those effects to last high-quality early childhood
education needs to be connected to high-quality elementary schools.
Standards-based reform
Standards-based
reform has been a popular strategy used to try to eliminate the
achievement gap in recent years. The goal of this reform strategy is to
raise the educational achievement of all students, not just minorities.
Many states have adopted higher standards for student achievement. This
type of reform focuses on scores on standardized tests, and these scores
show that a disproportionate share of the students who are not meeting
state achievement standards are Hispanic and African-American.
Therefore, it is not enough for minorities to improve just as much as
whites do—they must make greater educational gains in order to close the
gap.
Goals 2000
One example of standards-based reform was Goals 2000,
also known as the Educate America Act. Goals 2000 was enacted in 1994
by President Clinton and allowed the federal government a new role in
its support for education. It aimed to "provide a framework for meeting
the National Education Goals".
It was designed to provide resources to states and communities to make
sure that all students achieved their full potential by the year 2000.
This program set forth eight goals for American students, including all
children in America will start school ready to learn, increasing the
high school graduation rate to at least 90%, and increasing the standing
of American students to first in the world in achievement in math and
science. Goals 2000 also placed an emphasis on the importance of
technology, promising that all teachers would have modern computers in
their classroom and that effective software would be an integral part of
the curriculum in every school. President George Bush's No Child Left
Behind Act essentially replaced the Goals 2000 program.
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind Act
(NCLB) legislation was signed by President Bush in January 2002 and
dramatically expanded federal influence over the nation's more than
90,000 public schools. NCLB focuses on standardized test scores and
school accountability to ensure that all students have the same
educational opportunities. The main implications of this legislation
were that states had to conduct annual student assessments linked to
state standards to identify schools failing to make "adequate yearly
progress" (AYP) toward the stated goal of having all students achieve
proficiency in reading and math by 2013–2014 and to institute sanctions
and rewards based on each school's AYP status.
One of the motivations for this reform is that publicizing detailed
information on school-specific performance and linking that
"high-stakes" test performance to the possibility of sanctions will
improve the focus and productivity of public schools. However, critics
charge that test-based school accountability has several negative
consequences for the broad cognitive development of children.
Critics argue that NCLB and other test-based accountability
policies cause educators to shift resources away from important but
non-tested subjects and to focus instruction in math and reading on the
relatively narrow set of topics that are most heavily represented on the
high-stakes tests. Some even suggest that high-stakes testing may lead
school personnel to intentionally manipulate student test scores.
This system has been criticized by some for being unfair toward schools
that have the highest population of minority and poor students, as it
is harder for these schools to meet the standards set by the No Child
Left Behind Act, due to insufficient funding from either local,
district, or state actors. This in turn leads to a cycle of
underperformance and sanctions within these areas which furthers the
problems that the Act meant to fix.
NCLB has shown mixed success in eliminating the racial
achievement gap. Although test scores are improving, they are improving
equally for all races, which means that minority students are still
behind whites. There has also been some criticism as to whether an
increase in test scores actually corresponds to improvements in
education, since test standards vary from state to state and from year
to year.
Race to the Top
In 2010, the Obama Administration instituted the Race to the Top
(RTTT) program which provides financial incentives to states to produce
measurable student gains. RTTT's primary goals are to improve student
achievement, close achievement gaps, and improve high school graduation
rates.
The goals of both programs has been to close the achievement gap, but
the RTTT has been more focused on closing the gap between higher and
lower performing schools rather than focusing on a national approach.
The major difference between the two educational reform programs is
that RTTT is a competitive grant program that provides incentives for
schools to change, while the NCLB Act mandated various changes in state
and local education systems.
The RTTT's approach is more adaptable and focused as it allows for
individual actions between schools, and is meant to encourage reform
within schools without resorting to punishments, whereas the No Child
Left Behind Act relies on punishments as its main form of promoting
reform in schools.
Common Core
Another attempt to standardize the education of students is the Common Core State Standards Initiative,
also known as Common Core. The Common Core, created in 2009 and 2010,
sets benchmarks for the skills that students should have by certain
grade levels in subjects such as Math and Language Arts and the system
itself is to meant to be a national baseline for how students are
achieving. This baseline is meant to help establish what students need
in order to achieve in higher education.
While the standards are meant to be nationwide, they have only been
adopted by 35 states as it is not mandatory for states to subscribe to
the Common Core unless they desire federal grants.
The Common Core Initiative has been criticized as it has not yielded
any noticeable improvement in what has almost 10 years since it has been
implemented, due to a multiple reasons, from incorrect implementation
to content as the idea of a centralized system for education has been
criticized for not taking the dynamic differences in learning-style into
consideration.
Every Student Succeeds Act
The newest addition to the growing list of government-led initiatives has been the Every Student Succeeds Act
(ESSA). The ESSA, enacted in December 2015, is Congress's replacement
for the NCLB. The ESSA takes notes from both the RTTT and the NCLB, by
keeping the standardized testing of the NCLB while allowing for the
flexibility of the RTTT. The ESSA gives states more say in how schools
are held accountable, and how states can act to fix issues at their
schools, and as such, states can set long-term goals instead of having
to worry about year-to-year performance issues as with the NCLB.
States must still identify low performing schools and provide
additional support, but now states can focus on long-term solutions. The
new bill also focuses more on academic growth, which is subjective and
does not always line up with a student's grade level, whereas the NCLB
only cared whether students were performing to grade level.
By combining the standardized test requirements of the NCLB while
allowing for more state control like in the RTTT, the ESSA hopes to
achieve long-lasting success and reform.
Institutional changes
Research
has shown that making certain changes within schools can improve the
performance of minority students. These include lowering class size in
schools with a large population of minority students; expanding access
to high-quality preschool programs to minority families; and focus on teaching the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are necessary to retain high-level information.
School-based reform
Initiatives
to close the achievement gap have been implemented at the school,
district and state level in order to better address the issue. These
include investments in pre-kindergarten programs, class size reduction,
small schools, curricular reform, alignment of pre-kindergarten through
college standards and expectations, and improved teacher education
programs. Many schools have started implementing after-school activities
such as tutoring sessions, remedial programs, and rapid assessment
programs. These programs are meant to help minority students learn at a
more accelerated rate in order to help them catch up to their peers.
Other schools have started de-tracking their students in order to
provide the same quality education for all students, regardless of race.
De-tracking not only allows for all students to be taught in the same
way, but it also opens up new opportunities for students who would be
put on a certain career path by their education.
Charter schools
In the United States there are now 5,042 charter schools serving 1.5 million students in 39 states and Washington, D.C.
Although they serve only a fraction of the nation's public school
students, charter schools have seized a prominent role in education
today. The question of whether charters or traditional public schools do
a better job of educating students is still open to debate. The
research is highly mixed due to the complexities of comparison and wide
performance differences among charters.
Charter schools
are by definition independent public schools. Although funded with
taxpayer dollars, they operate free from many of the laws and
regulations that govern traditional public schools. In exchange for that
freedom, they are bound to the terms of a contract, or "charter," that
lays out a school's mission, academic goals, and accountability
procedures.
The average charter school enrollment is 372, compared with about 478
in all public schools. Researchers have linked small schools with higher
achievement, more individualized instruction, greater safety, and
increased student involvement.
With their relative autonomy, charter schools are also seen as a way to
provide greater educational choice and innovation within the public
school system. Another attraction of charter schools is that they often
have specialized educational programs. Charters frequently take
alternative curricular approaches, emphasize particular fields of study
or serve special populations of students. That growth of charter schools
has been particularly strong in cities. More than 55 percent of public
charter schools were in urban settings.
Some charters have high concentrations of minority students because
demand for schooling alternatives is highest among such students, whom
they say are often poorly served by the traditional public school
systems. Lastly, another positive argument for charter schools is that
they improve the existing school systems through choice and competition.
However, there are some criticisms of charter schools. There is a
high variability in the quality and success of charter schools across
the nation. A high-profile report from the American Federation of Teachers
(2002), for example, argued that many charter school authorizers have
failed to hold the administrators and teachers accountable, leaving some
students to languish in low-performing schools.
Another concern of critics is that charters are more racially
segregated than traditional public schools, thus denying students the
educational "benefits associated with attending diverse schools". Skeptics also worry that charter schools unfairly divert resources and policy attention from regular public schools.
Taken together, studies about charter schools are inconclusive
and have mixed results. Studies by the Goldwater Institute and
California State University-Los Angeles found that students in charter
schools show higher growth in achievement than their counterparts in
traditional public schools.
However, another study by the Institute of Race and Poverty at the
University of Minnesota Law show that after two decades of experience,
most charter schools in the Twin Cities still underperform comparable
traditional public schools and are highly segregated by race and income.
Non-English schools
To
evade a shift to English, some Native American tribes have initiated
language immersion schools for children, where a native Indian language
is the medium of instruction. For example, the Cherokee Nation instigated a 10-year language preservation plan that involved growing new fluent speakers of the Cherokee language
from childhood on up through school immersion programs as well as a
collaborative community effort to continue to use the language at home. This plan was part of an ambitious goal that in 50 years, 80% or more of the Cherokee people will be fluent in the language. The Cherokee Preservation Foundation
has invested $3 million into opening schools, training teachers, and
developing curricula for language education, as well as initiating
community gatherings where the language can be actively used. Formed in 2006, the Kituwah Preservation & Education Program (KPEP) on the Qualla Boundary focuses on language immersion programs for children from birth to fifth grade,
developing cultural resources for the general public and community
language programs to foster the Cherokee language among adults.
There is also a Cherokee language immersion school in Tahlequah,
Oklahoma that educates students from pre-school through eighth grade.
Because Oklahoma's official language is English, Cherokee immersion
students are hindered when taking state-mandated tests because they have
little competence in English.
The Department of Education of Oklahoma said that in 2012 state tests:
11% of the school's sixth-graders showed proficiency in math, and 25%
showed proficiency in reading; 31% of the seventh-graders showed
proficiency in math, and 87% showed proficiency in reading; 50% of the
eighth-graders showed proficiency in math, and 78% showed proficiency in
reading.
The Oklahoma Department of Education listed the charter school as a
Targeted Intervention school, meaning the school was identified as a
low-performing school but has not so that it was a Priority School. Ultimately, the school made a C, or a 2.33 grade point average on the state's A-F report card system.
The report card shows the school getting an F in mathematics
achievement and mathematics growth, a C in social studies achievement, a
D in reading achievement, and an A in reading growth and student
attendance.
"The C we made is tremendous," said school principal Holly Davis,
"[t]here is no English instruction in our school's younger grades, and
we gave them this test in English." She said she had anticipated the low grade because it was the school's first year as a state-funded charter school, and many students had difficulty with English.
Eighth graders who graduate from the Tahlequah immersion school are
fluent speakers of the language, and they usually go on to attend Sequoyah High School where classes are taught in both English and Cherokee.
Private schools
Private schools
are another institution used in attempt to narrow the racial
achievement gap.
A disparity between achievement gaps in private and public schools can
be seen using a U.S. Department of Education database to compute the
average National Assessment of Educational Progress test score
differences between black students and white students in both public and
private schools.
NAEP Achievement Differences for Public and Private Schools
| NAEP Test Subject |
Year |
4th Grade Gap (Public) |
12th Grade Gap (Public) |
Percent Difference* Between 4th and 12th Grade Gaps (Public) |
4th Grade Gap (Private) |
12th Grade Gap (Private) |
Percent Difference* Between 4th and 12th Grade Gaps (Private)
|
| Reading |
2002 |
29 |
25 |
-13.8 |
27 |
14 |
-48.1
|
| Writing |
2002 |
20 |
23 |
15 |
22 |
18 |
-18.2
|
| Math |
2000 |
30 |
33 |
10 |
28 |
23 |
-17.9
|
| Science |
2001 |
35 |
31 |
-11.4 |
27 |
20 |
-25.9
|
The table on white/Black NAEP Achievement Differences for Public and
Private Schools above, shows a sizeable achievement gap between black
and white fourth-graders in both public and private schools. However,
the private-sector achievement gap is narrower in the 12th grade than
the fourth grade for all of the core NAEP subjects. Public schools, on
the other hand, see a larger gap in both writing and mathematics at the
12th-grade level than at the fourth. Averaged across subjects, the
public school racial achievement gap is virtually unchanged between
fourth and 12th grades, while the gap in private schools is an average
of 27.5 percentage points smaller in the 12th grade than the fourth.
The achievement gap closes faster in private schools not because
white private school students lose ground with respect to white public
school students as they move to higher grades, but because black private
school students learn at a substantially higher rate than black public
school students. Economist Derek Neal has found that black students
attending urban private schools are far more likely to complete high
school, gain admission to college, and complete college than similar
students in urban public schools.
Similarly, in a study comparing graduation rates of all Milwaukee
public school students (of all income levels) with those of the
low-income participants in the city's private school voucher program,
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jay Greene found the voucher students
were more than one-and-a-half-times as likely to graduate as public
school students.
However, others argue that private schools actually perpetuate
and exacerbate the achievement gap. Without controlling for student
background differences, private schools scored higher than public
schools. However, a study showed that demographic differences between
students in public and private schools more than account for the
relatively high scores of private schools. In fact, after controlling
for these differences, the advantageous "private school effect"
disappears and even reverses in most cases.
Private schools have selective acceptance and a different demographic.
Another criticism is that private schools only serve a small percent of
the population and therefore cannot make a huge effect on closing the
achievement gap.
Greg Wiggan believes that although there is a lot of research on
the topic of the racial achievement gap, there is a gap in the research.
Wiggan believes that the gap that is missing is the research of the
perspective of the students, specifically high-achieving Black students
in private schools.
Resources for poor school districts
Another
explanation to address this educational gap is the lack of resources
attainable by certain groups of students. A study found that there is a
need for financial literacy for students enrolled in colleges and
universities. Specifically, there is a need for student knowledge about
loans, budgeting, and time requirements for degree completion.
Focus group results in the same study concluded that students in search
of financial aid information believe that there will be a lack of
understanding among advisors and staff regarding minority student's
cultural/identity based circumstances. As a result of this belief, many
students rather just not seek any services.
On the high school level, a report finds that the more people of
color enrolled at any particular school, the less likely that the school
offers any computer science courses whatsoever.
Nationwide economics indicate 1.3 million new jobs in the tech industry
by 2022. Meanwhile, African Americans and Latinos only make up about 5
percent of the technical work force.
Supplemental funding for targeted disadvantaged school districts
in Ohio showed a reduction in performance gaps between disadvantaged
districts and other districts. Supplementing state funds for the
districts with higher amount of disadvantaged students produced benefits
in the form of student achievement.
IDAs, or individual development account initiatives, introduced in the
1990s to address poverty, were based on the belief that poor families
should have access to asset development in order to break the cycle of
poverty.
As of now the main focus of most IDAs is on home ownership or starting
small businesses. There has been a push for partnerships between
community agencies and higher education institutions that would offer
IDAs to encourage lower income individuals to turn towards higher
education.
Teacher-focused reform
Another
focus of reform directed toward the achievement gap has been on teacher
development, as research shows that since teachers are responsible for
almost every aspect of a child's education within the bounds of a
classroom. Therefore, in order to best address the achievement gap,
reform efforts based on improved teaching are one of the main strategies
used to address the gap. This reform effort has been both top-down, in
the form of higher state standards for teacher education and
preparation,
as well as bottom-up, through programs like Teach for America and
AmeriCorps that aim to address educational inequity by recruiting and
training teachers specifically to work in high-needs schools.
Teach For America
Teach for America
(TFA) recruits and selects graduates from some of the top colleges and
universities across the country to teach in the nation's most
challenging K-12 schools throughout the nation. It began in 1990 with
500 teachers and has since expanded to over 4,000 teacher placements in
2010.
In the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management they use
individual-level student data linked to teacher data in North Carolina
to estimate the effects of having a TFA teacher compared to a
traditional teacher. According to studies about the effect of different
teacher-preparation programs in Louisiana, North Carolina, and
Tennessee, TFA is among the most effective sources of new teachers in
low-income communities. Each of these statewide studies, conducted
between 2009 and 2012, found that corps members often help their
students achieve academic gains at rates equal to or larger than those
for students of more veteran teachers.
The findings show that TFA teachers are in general more effective,
according to student exam scores, than traditional teachers that would
be in the classroom in their stead.
These estimates demonstrate that, compared with traditional teachers
with similar levels of experience, TFA teachers have strong positive
effects on student test scores. And despite the limitations of TFA
teachers, they are no worse than average traditional teachers in
teaching math subjects and much more effective in teaching science
subjects.
Although TFA teachers tend to have stronger academic credentials,
they have not been taught in traditional training programs, are more
likely to teach for a few years, and are assigned to some of the most
challenging schools in the country.
Given these differences, the TFA program has been controversial.
Critics of Teach For America point out two of the major problems. The
first is that most TFA teachers have not received traditional teacher
training. TFA corps members participate in an intensive five-week summer
national institute and a two-week local orientation and induction
program prior to their first teaching assignment, and therefore some
argued they are not as prepared for the demands of the classroom as
traditionally trained teachers. The second criticism is that TFA
requires only a two-year teaching commitment, and the majority of corps
members leave at the end of that commitment. The short tenure of TFA
teachers is troubling because research shows that new teachers are
generally less effective than more experienced teachers.
Narrowing the achievement gap through technology
Computer
and technology use have been linked to increased student achievement.
"When teachers and administrators make a sustained commitment to the use
of computers in the classroom, student achievement increases (Mann & Shafer, 1997).
Randomized experiments demonstrate that the performance of
low-achieving students can be improved by using technology that adjusts
the level of difficulty of the books and math problems that are
presented to each student, raises the probability that each student will
achieve high scores on end-of-book reading comprehension quizzes and
high accuracy scores on daily math assignments, raises the probability
that each student can earn high letter grades, and creates a structured
environment where each student is likely to receive regular, objective,
positive feedback signaling that he or she is advancing on a daily
basis, promoting high self-efficacy and a strong sense of control over academic outcomes. This demonstrates that it is possible to increase engagement, effort
and performance, even when the tasks presented to each student become
progressively more difficult, if technology is used to individualize
task difficulty and create a structure where it is possible for all
students to achieve high reading comprehension and math accuracy scores
on a regular basis.
A comparison of the cost-effectiveness of this approach indicates that
it is more efficient than 22 other strategies for raising student
achievement.
Generally, those students who enrolled and finished online courses were older college students. Also, these students have better chance to perform higher self-efficacy scores (Xie & Huang, 2014) and future career ambitions or higher incomes (Carr, 2000; Park & Choi, 2009). Studies shows that online learners are tend to less likely to make friends and become socialized (Varela et al., 2012),
while there's possible cause for example the experience of
disappointing relationships in the context of education (Romero &
Usart, 2014). As Friedman (2007)
claimed that the world is flat, online education has made the education
becomes more accessible for a wider range of students. But there's also
some counterpoints of online education for example: lack of technical
support (Palmer & Holt, 2010; Yang & Cornelius, 2014); inadequate teacher support (Palmer & Holt, 2010); feeling of isolation (Reilly, Gallagher-Lepak, & Killion, 2012; Tucker, 2014; Yang & Cornelius, 2004).
Using technology as a tool for narrowing the achievement gap
begins with a purpose, communication, listening, and collaboration.
These skills can be achieved through the use of weblogs, social
networking sites, feeds, and myriad other multimedia. In classrooms,
students can communicate internally, or they can work side by side with
others who are located thousands of miles away. Through the use of
technology, presentations can be archived so that the material can be
reviewed at any time. "All teachers could record important parts of what
they do in the classroom that can then be archived to the class Weblog
and used by students who may have missed the class or just want a
refresher on what happened." (Richardson, p. 117)
Having access to information on the web gives students an
advantage to learning. "Students at all levels show more interest in
their work and their ability to locate and reflect upon their work is
greatly enhanced as are the opportunities for collaborative learning"
(Richardson, p. 28).
Weblogs are different from posts or comments; they require students to
analyze and synthesize the content and communicate their understanding
with the audience responses in mind.
Technology has been incorporated into the Standards. Even though
the NCLB Act holds school districts accountable for student achievement,
there are still many students who do not have the resources at home to
fully take part in these excellent educational tools. Some teachers feel
that technology is not the solution and see it as a risk. Therefore,
technology is not always being used to its fullest potential by teachers
and students do not gain the advantages technology offers. "Given the
fact that the amount of information going online shows no sign of
slowing, if they are unable to consistently collect potentially relevant
information for their lives and careers and quickly discern what of
that information is most useful, they will be at a disadvantage."
(Richardson, p. 73).
According to the U.S. Census, by 2012, it is estimated that 70%
of homes will have broadband access. While this is a large percentage,
it still leaves 30% of households without internet access. The
government has lent its hand in closing the Global Achievement Gap by
granting funding for low-income school districts for programs such as
one-on-one computing, however, the fact that many of these students do
not have online capability at home is still a main issue. This digital divide
may cause the achievement gap to increase as technology continues to
become heavily integrated in the daily coursework for school children.
Students need to have Internet access outside of school on a regular
basis to successfully complete challenging coursework.
According to National Center for Education Statistics, it noted
that African American 12th grade male students had the lowest reading
scores among other racial and ethnic group. Reading gaps between African
Americans and Whites have increased from 1992 to present (National
Center for Education Statistics, 2016). Tonsing-Meyer (2012)
claimed that the reading and writing practice was specified and
emphasized in 85% of online course assignment, with activities attached,
which might improve this situation.
Students who have problems with technology interfered are more
likely to withdraw from their online courses (Bambara et al., 2009).
Also, there's no sufficient technology support which will also leads
students to drop the class since their problems could not be solved
quickly (Palmer & Holt, 2010; Yang & Cornelius, 2004).
Students who were more focused and engaged themselves to the
class tends to receive higher grades; their self-confidence can be
gained through daily life use of Internet (Sahin & Shelley, 2008). Male online learners had higher Internet self-efficacy than female, while they participated less in discussions (Chang et al., 2014; Ong & Lai, 2006).
As Fletcher (2015)
indicated, possible factors that helped African American college
students to gain academic success via online education might be:
positive pre-college educational experiences, supportive environments in
college campus, involving in campus activities, positive faculty
interactions and support, same race/gender relationships with peers,
family support, self-confidence, future career ambitions and the ability
to face racism.
College environment
Students
of color like African American students need a color-blind environment
to support them reaching towards academic success better. In this way, they are more likely to gain self-confidence and educational resilience (Tucker, 2014).
Interventions fon Non-Cognitive Factors
Many
different types of interventions can be done to help students who are a
part of a negative stereotype, but a self-affirmation intervention
would be the most helpful for students academic performance.
This intervention was expected to help improve a group of students who
are at risk to intervene with the group's academic performance. This
intervention was tested in two different double-blind field experiences,
and then compared.
One of the things seen was that African American students who were a
part of the control condition, who saw their performance declining early
in the term, their performance did not improve as the term went on, and
in fact it got worse.
One thing that could lead to a slight improvement is having a small
reduction in the psychological threats. Small interventions were seen to
have a greater effect when they were carried out in multiple trials,
different times. Having just one intervention one time does not have a
positive effect on a student, rather if there are multiple smaller
interventions carried out different times.
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